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Web Only / Views » March 15, 2007

Productivity: Is The Boom Over?

It is too early to pronounce the end of the '90s growth spurt, but it is certainly not too early to be concerned.

While it may sound like an obscure detail for economics nerds, the Department of Labor’s latest data on productivity growth should be causing a greater stir, because it is hugely important for the economy and people’s lives.

In the mid-’90s, the rate of productivity growth unexpectedly jumped from 1.5 percent a year to more than 2.5 percent year, where it stayed until the middle of 2004. But since then, the new data show that productivity growth has dropped back down to just a 1.5 percent annual rate. It is too early to pronounce the end of the ’90s growth spurt, but it is certainly not too early to be concerned.

Productivity growth is the main long-run determinant of living standards. It measures the value of goods and services produced in an hour of work. If productivity increases rapidly, then workers can enjoy substantial and sustained gains in living standards. This can mean more goods and services (including items like health care and education) and it can also mean more leisure, so that workers can sustain the same living standard even as they work fewer hours. More rapid productivity growth also makes it easier to address problems like global warming, since an economy with rapid productivity growth can more easily divert resources toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions while still raising standards of living.

For these reasons, we should be very concerned about the rate of productivity growth. While distribution is extremely important–at a point in time, more for Bill Gates means less for everyone else–it is a lot easier to accomplish almost any goal (including redistributing income) in the context of rapidly rising productivity.

It would be easier to gauge the course of future productivity growth if economists had a better idea of what caused it. However, the two big changes in productivity growth trends in the post-war period both caught economists by surprise.

In 1973, the rate of productivity growth slowed sharply, after a quarter-century of rapid growth. Even today, there is no widely accepted explanation for this slowdown. And when the economy upturned in 1995, economists also had no explanation. While everyone knows that computers and information technology were central in this boom, computers (even PCs) had been around for decades without having any measurable impact on productivity growth. It is not clear why computers suddenly led to a productivity boom at that time.

Since we don’t know what caused the upturn, there is not much basis for saying if and when we should expect the burst of productivity to come to an end. But we can certainly speculate on some factors that could play a role.

At the top of my list is the fast money game being played on Wall Street with hedge funds and other forms of creative finance, which can have negative effects on productivity growth for two reasons. First, economic theory tells us that workers will respond to incentives, which means that many highly educated people are running to careers on Wall Street in pursuit of multi-million dollar paychecks, instead of careers in computers, engineering, medicine and other productive areas. And second, many of the buyouts may be structured primarily with the goal of generating fees for agents rather than creating viable productive companies. We’ll know more about how these deals turn out after the next recession, but anyone who thinks that the high-rollers always know what they’re doing need only think of Time-Warner. The world’s largest media company sold itself for AOL stock at the peak of the Internet bubble. In a couple of years, the AOL stock was almost worthless, which meant that Time-Warner had sold itself for almost nothing.

There are other potential villains on the productivity front. Diverting resources to the military drains them from productive uses. Similarly, our patent financed systems of drug and software development are hugely inefficient. And of course, leaving much of our population poorly educated and locking up more than 2 million people in prison doesn’t help productivity either.

Raising productivity growth is not easy, and at this point the data do not yet clearly show that we have a problem. However, the stretch of slow productivity growth has persisted long enough that it should be getting serious attention.

They are official US government figures. And they are now rather outdated. Your "comeback" that they are "auntey-seamite" is ludicrous !Posted by blondemike on 2007-04-09 12:30:56

These numbers make no sense. They are exaggerated and based on inflated perceptions of economic opportunity costs. In other words, they are anti-semitic propaganda. They are designed to inflame opinion agains the Jews.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-04-06 18:05:59

The Washington Report On Middle East Affairs gave the official aid to Israel figures as of November 1, 1997, ten years ago, these are from 1949 to 1997.
Foreign Aid Grants and loans---$74,157,600,00
Other US Aid to Israel-------------$9,047,227,200
Interest to Israel from Advanced Payments----$1,650,000,000
Interest Cost to US Taxpayers---$49, 936, 680,000
Grand Total as of TEN years ago---$134, 791, 507,200.
I think we easily spent another 116 billion since then to get a current total of a quarter of a trillion or 250 billion dollars. If I'm off by a little the figure is still far higher than the establishment bs figure of 105 billion that you quote. I got this by punching in US aid to Israel on yahoo and the wrmea.com website came up right away. I have long been familiar with their publication so I know they
are trustworthy.
Cabbie, your "peepul" are notorious liars when it comes to numbers, of ALL kinds.Posted by blondemike on 2007-04-05 17:16:11

Cabbie, to describe correctly what you are would be to use language I normally disdain.Posted by blondemike on 2007-04-05 09:38:28

Hardesty you are pathetic...and vicious.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-04-05 00:07:51

Is that the best you can do ? Sad...................Posted by blondemike on 2007-04-03 15:28:38

Old angry white man
You cannot change history
Choke on dick mas puto
Haiku for racistsPosted by texasindependent on 2007-04-03 09:46:22

There once was a brown little beaner
who liked to swallow his own tiny wiener
He gave himself the title of Tex
but all knew he was but a mere Mex
He was another wannabe white boy
but to the neocons he was just another goy
He deeply hated all those nasty Arabs
whom he wanted to put all on slabs
Beaner thought Bush was the head of new Rome
but the empire fell because of the evil Noam
He was driving his beamer one day in the rain
and out the window flew the remains of his brain
To historical truth beaner would never ever yield
and so he is now buried in potter's field.Posted by blondemike on 2007-04-02 16:19:07

[i]Never argue with fools. They will drag you down to their level then beat you with experience every time.[/i]
Very interesting thread this. Symbolic. Wait till rp comes back to check in a few days and sees how off his prophecy was. Hey. It just hit me. Thats why he's a [b]recursive[/b] prophet! He'll come back and edit in a new post predicting how marvelously elevated and spot-on topic this discussion will soon become. How devious.Posted by Eric Blair on 2007-04-02 12:18:31

ONLY forum I was ever banned from was Jeannette Sherwin's Oakland News and two weeks later "god" struck her dead ! She was a Demo Party hack who wouldn't accept criticism from the left or right about the Dummycrats. So, boy beaner, this is what happens when you uncritically repeat shit from people like Scorp Doobie AKA Master Bates. Oh, I have had a DVD player for three years.............I demolished Fat Ollie Kamm in a lengthy rebuttal which he wisely chose not to publish and have been married for 18 1/2 years. Have always had a full head of hair and am 62. So far EVERY "fact" you listed has been wrong. Most of our neighbors like us very much and Nina is the head of the Neighborhood Watch Committee. Except for TWO criminal neighbors we are very much liked and supported. If you want to get specific about "unfortunate" I can respond to that too. I don't call the two criminal neighbors "unfortunate" I call them criminals. I supervise 15 people at work and except for 1 white person, no problems. Ok, leeetle wannabe TexAssan, you are batting ZERO.Posted by blondemike on 2007-04-02 11:29:01

BM is 61. So instead of blonde mike it would appear to be BALD MIKE He has had numerous addresses in CA.
From the Jack Benny website.........
I recently purchased six VHS shows from the 1954 season, I forgot how great he was ! I have watched them over and over. Would to get more, anybody who has some to sell or knows who might be selling them (VHS) please contact me. Thank you.
Michael Hardesty smi_mh@yahoo.com
Oakland, CA USA - 9/8/2003 2:46:29 PM
Mikey doesn't have a DVD player I see.
From the Berkeley Daily Planet........
LEFTIST CRAPOLA
Editors, Daily Planet:
Thanks to Carlton Jones and Marguerite Talley-Hughes for proving Michael LarrickPosted by texasindependent on 2007-04-02 11:09:00

You never make any arguments to address, you never give any supporting evidence, as you just admit above yours is a vile combination of ad hominem attacks and Jewish racist supremacism.
I agree that you have an even lower IQ than the average Jewish Israeli one of 99. The tipoff is your absolute inability to even deal with the many references I've been kind enough to give you, you are the typical narcissist totally demented Jewish male as my wife observes, you somehow think I should treat your sources, as few as they are, respectfully while making what you admit are vile ad hominem attacks on mine.
"RAAAAYYYYYSSSSHHHHIIISSSTTTT ! LLLYYYYYAAAAHHHHH !
FFFFFFAAAAAYYYYYSSSSSHHHHHIIISSSTTT ! Auntey-Semenite !
NNNNNNNNAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRZZZIIIIII !"
That's the whole of your argument. Frankly, after dealing with YOU,
in my worst mood, I wish there had been a "holocaust." You are an ugly, repulsive shit and loudmouthed lying piece of Commie garbage. "Six trillion" of you would be like six trillion turds being dumped in Lake Michigan. Now get a life !Posted by blondemike on 2007-04-02 09:02:11

BM,
You never address the points and the arguments and supporting evidence made by me or others. You answer in a combination of vile and racist ad hominem attacks, repetitious specious claims, and tired old citations of long discredited agenda driven hacks whose views very few people share. This is no way to carry on a real debate. I have decided that you have very low cognitive abilities.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-04-02 07:37:06

Well, then I'd be like you EXCEPT you never did so the "no longer" wouldn't apply in your case.Posted by blondemike on 2007-04-01 13:11:25

BM you no longer have viable arguments.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-04-01 05:41:30

BM is an uneducated slob so he makes ad hominem attacks and then is to stupid to recall that he made them. How sad for the fascist cause.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-30 16:22:00

TexMexASS, why is yo' old lady still being a puta at night ? I thought you were driving a beamer. a beaner driving a beamer, wow, that's the americano success story like yo' Uncle Alberto, too bad about his sorry ass. Now let me congragulate you on the impressive recycling of Shitcago's "argument"-----"Lyaaahhh ! Raaayyyysssshhhiiissstt ! Faaayyyssshhhiisssttt ! Deniaaaahhhhaaa ! Naaaarrrrzzzziii ! Auntey-Semenite ! A-Rab lover !" WWWWWWOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW !
That has really pulverized me ! And I even hate whites since I hate all races ! beaner logic. Did you know that brown is the color of SHIT ? and thanks for the lectures on race and realism, oh man, I don't know if I can take all this at one sitting........it's so profound !Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-30 11:34:14

Seig Heil Mikey
Lets evaluate racism and realism.
Racism is discrimination based on the assumtion that some "races" are superior to others.
Realism is a dispostion to deal with facts practically.
I am not claiming superiority to haji. I am however assessing his behavior with a mutitude of personal, pictorial, and printed evidence. Haji's behavior is not acceptable and he will be punished until he returns to a quasi-human state.
You on the other hand dislike all races. You claim white racial superiority. You claim personal superiority.
You and the other historical denial dimwits on the Internet are racists.Posted by texasindependent on 2007-03-30 11:20:40

Chicago "Argument"---"Lyaah. Raayshist. Faaaaychist. Naarzi. Auntey-Semite. Mason is great BECAUSE I say so. There is a CLASS explanation for EVERYTHING because I say so. And, no, Marx didn't write A World Without Jews BECAUSE I say so." WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW ! Impressive argumentation, dude !Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-30 08:59:31

Forgetting ones purpose is the most common form of stupidity. -- Nietzsche
Posted by recursive prophet on Mar 28, 2007 at 1:58 PM
Arpie, your best post ever! (... mostly.)
" ... digital barfight " really cracked me up !
Thanks for the laughs and all the rest.
I hope you stick around here at ITT
and go on to even better than best !Posted by David in Canuckistan on 2007-03-29 18:14:20

Morris discredited himself long before with his deliberate underestimates of the exiled and fled Palestinians. See The Transformation of Palestine edited by Professor Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
of Northwestern University, 1970. Actually you outright LIED about the publication date of The Zionist Connection twice and I had to correct you. Have you not read TexASS independent's many anti-Arab writings on this site ? So your statement that I am the only racist is wrong on BOTH counts, I'm not a racist and TexASS is. By the way, there were many more than 500,000 Jews in Europe at the end of WW2. No more than one million at the most perished during the war and the Soviets had evacuated the great bulk of both eastern Polish Jewry and Soviet Jews to beyond the Urals before Hitler invaded. See Debunking The Genocide Myth by Paul Rassinier as well as the earlier edition of The Drama of The European Jews with my introduction in the first Steppingstones edition in 1975. Also see Walter N. Sanning's The Dissolution Of East European Jewry for an analysis of what actually happened and where 90% of the "six million" actually emigrated to. No official Jewish source here is trustworthy because they are all political hack works based on the standard holohoax lie. Einstein would turning over in his grave if he could see the double digit untermensch garbage that makes up a sizable portion of the so-called "Jewish Community." Fortunately intermarriage is proceeding apace and there will be no Chicago cabbies in the next generation. People will have escaped from the holohoaxing. self-pitying tribal racism that marks so much of contemporary Jewry. And that pockmarks the face of Chicago Cabbie which looks like David Irving's hemorrhoids on a very bad day.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-29 16:34:40

Benny Morris may have discredited himself with the infamous Ha'aretz interview but his scholarship is dead on!! Somehow he separates his political feelings from his scholarly findings.
Dinnerstein is not a racist. What ever makes you say such a ludicrous thing? You are the only racist on this blog. And a lowlife. Not Dinnerstein. Truman waived the quotas by executive order allowing in about 160,000 Jews but McCarran, an anti-semite, put a rider on a 1948 80th congress immigration bill which effectively barred Jews from entering the US. The Jewish refugee problem in Europe began with under 500,000 Jews and was the very hardest to resolve. It's complete resolution took well into the mid to late 1950s until many European Jews got visas to their final destinations (true, many rejected Palestine as an option).
Getting dates wrong and publishers wrong is a mistake not a lie and has no consequence. Certainly it is nothing to get all upset over. It just shows how hateful you really are you dirtbag racist.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-29 16:07:09

There are official Jewish historians as there are official Jewish establishments. Jews are not mostly semites so the term here is invalid but would still be inaccurate if they were. An anti-Jew hates Jews qua Jews and I don't know of anybody who feels that way. Benny Morris is an anti-Arab racist who FAVORS ethnic cleansing, both in 1947-48 and now. His figures are on the LOW side and have been disputed by Schlaim, Flappan and others. McCarran Act did NOT keep Jews out after WW2 because all quotas were WAIVED for Jews after 1945. Dinnerstein is a very lowlife Zionist Racist Mediocrity of the type that predominates in Jewish intellectual circles. My Jewish wife has given me the definitive lowdown on stereotypical hysterical Jewish males, not ALL are that way but a great many are and I have to discount them en toto. Actually many Moroccans came BEFORE 1967 but more afterwards, spare me your Mossad bogus nonstats. MANY Jews are racists and liars, more so than among the Gentiles. The ancient Hebes were the lowest of lowlife, racist, genocidal and insane to the core. In fact the very term "Jew" is only of recent origin, since the last few centuries. The ORIGINAL date of The Zionist Connection WAS 1979 AND IT WAS PUBLISHED BY DODD, MEAD, NOT REGNERY. I KNOW AND IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO MAKE A $10,000.00 BET LET'S DO IT NOW. I DID THE WEST COAST PUBLICITY TOUR FOR THE ZIONIST CONNECTION, IT WAS LILIENTHAL'S FOURTH AND LAST BOOK. PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR LYING MOUTH IS, PUNK ! Regnery published What Price Israel in 1952, NOT 1948. Lilienthal's article Israel's Flag Is Not Mine did appear in Reader's Digest in 1948. Not The Zionist Connection which didn't appear until 1979. 1979. 1979. 1979. As usual you don't have the facts, you ugly little shitbag. 1979. 1979. 1979. 1979. Hurwitz's book is crap, I HAVE read it and it is Zionist Propaganda, NOT historical fact. I paid a buck for it and it was a gyp.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-29 14:19:53

In the first place the term "official Jewish Historian" is anti-semitic since there is no such thing and since it gives the false impression of dishonesty, suppression of academic freedom, and propaganda. Cecil Roth is not a Zionist but an historian of the Medieval period.
Your figures on Palestine are false. Read Benny Morris Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, a source that is impeccable and hardly friendly to the Zionist case. Also read the somewhat objective and very detailed Struggle for Palestine by J.C. Hurowitz which is quite honest and candid about the expulsions and the plight of the Palestinians. It was published in 1951 and was closer to the time of the events so has more detailed information.
To call Jews liars is racist. There are more liars on your side of the divide than ours. And more racists.
Like most idiots you don't realize that popular books are republished by many different publishers at different times. The ORIGINAL date was 1951 with regnery. Lillienthal may have been an old New Dealer but I'm sure not an advocate of "world government" whatever that means. Fascists like yourself engage in a kind of "string of vices" thinking, ie. if he is a New Dealer he is a "Jewish, one world government, fiat money, Stalinist, Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah......................................." Most people who oppose Zionism also are socialists and many are Jewish. As far as "one world government" is concerned, only transnational capitalism and big corporations can create that reality. They are gradually doing so through foreign direct investment, cross border mega-mergers, global trade, and the WTO and other instruments of global class rule. The growth of this activity is once again picking up after a brief respite after the recession of 2001. The ratio of Global FDI inflows to world GDP is edging back up to its peak in the late 1990s and is set to exceed it very soon. See James Petras's website.
Very few Moroccans came before 1967. About 80,000 Yemenites, 130,000 Iraqis, 4,000 Libyans, 2,000 Syrians, 50,000 Egyptians, and a few thousand from other places. The Morocans were prosperous and secure and had no need to immigrate until 1967 when about 250,000 came to Israel.
The McCarran amendment of 1948 in the 80th US congress did keep Jews out by stipulating favor toward occupational and country of origin charactoristics that effectively excluded pretty much all the Jewish refugees in Europe. This is according to Leonard Dinnerstein's book on the Holocaust and US Policy Toward European Jewish Refugees after WWII. Again read sources other than the fascist noontide press and ihr.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-29 10:18:42

Again, you have no facts, no history, not even a philosophy but only the usual ad hominems. I have seen the stats and there were more than 1.8 million people in Mandatory Palestine. They included 1.350 million Arabs and at least 600,000 Jews. As of January 1949 UNRRA was feeding and housing such as it was just under one million Palestinian Arabs, the official count was about 975,000, that is just under one million. NOT 750,000. So since your premise here is wrong all of your subsequent figures are wrong EXCEPT for the 160,000 figure but that figure that remained is from a much larger balance than you acknowledge. As far pogroms go, I very much doubt your 600 or 900 figure from Iraq for the simple reason that your tribe are perennial liars when it comes to atrocity figures, you had hundreds of perjurers willing to swear about Demjanjuk and I have no doubt that "Ivan The Terrible" either never existed or was not guilty of what he was accused of. The record of perjury in the Nuremberg, Malmedy, Frankfurt, Eichmann and Demjanjuk Stalinist Show Trials is AWESOME. I'm not saying that every Jew is a liar but I AM saying that they have more than their share of liars. Maybe some other groups as a whole are even worse. I NEVER claimed that Indians killed "millions of whites" but claimed that they killed millions. And that's true. They killed millions of each other and at least thousands of whites north of the Rio Grande, probably much more south. But I did claim that the Spanish killed tens of millions of Indians, both south & north of the Rio Grande and in Hispaniola. You can't even read straight. I would never take psychoactive drugs because they destroy your brain, see Toxic Psychiatry by Peter Breggin, MD. Perhaps you need to STOP taking them yourself because they are obviously impairing your thinking processes.The Zionist Connection was published in 1979, not 1951, by Dodd, Mead, not Regnery. As usual you are wrong. What Price Israel ? was published in 1952 by Regnery and The Other Side Of The Coin in 1965 by Devin-Adair. Lilienthal was an old New Dealer who advocated world government for many years and only changed his mind there much later in the late 70s. I have known him for over 32 years and he has forgotten more about the Middle Eastern Conflict than you ever knew. He's still alive in DC at age 93. But in failing health now. I read Glubb's book but it has to be taken with a grain of salt, he was an enforcer of and apologist for UK imperialism. Although far fewer Jews perished in the Baghdad riots than you claim, IT IS STILL IRRELEVANT TO THE ISRAELI DISPOSSESSION OF A MILLION ARABS IN 1947-48. And it was NOT typical of the normally good relations Jews had in Iraq. Until Israel started recruiting them in the late 40s and early 50s. It wasn't just Lilienthal who observed that the doors were wide open to the Jews, it was FDR and Truman and many others. McCarran NEVER kept Jews out AFTER WW2. FDR kept some out before WW2. The massive Jewish immigration to the USA after 1945 was not affected by the McCarran-Walter Act. That was a lie circulated by Marxist felon Hank Greenspun of the Las Vegas Sun. The Moroccans started immigrating big time to Israel in the 50s, NOT just starting in 1967, it's true that before they came the Iraqis and Yemenis had come in great numbers and made up most of the Oriental Jews and it is true that after the 67 war the rest of the Moroccans came. Cecil Roth is a Zionist hack like 90% of the official Jewish historians, he is solely respected by dummies like you who agree with his "history.'" Your last paragraph is what the cognitive psychologists call projection. Since psychiatry, psychoanalysis and 95% of even psychology is a total fraud, I won't be looking for "professional" (talk about overused cliched terms !) "help." Pot, scrub thy stinky ass self.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-29 09:39:24

In t he first place your demographics is wrong. There were no more than 1.8 million total residents of British Mandatory Palestine by all accounts. 600,000 were Jews, 1.2 million were Arabs in 1948. By the June signing of the very last armistice agreement between Syria and Israel there were 160,000 Palestinian Arabs left in the three quarters of British Mandatory Palestine captured in the war by Israel. 15,000 Palestinian Arabs were killed in the war. There was about one quarter of the country left that the Haganah never entered. If one million Palestinians were expelled in the areas conquered by the Haganah that would mean that only 25,000 Arabs inhabited Gaza and the West Bank at the very start of the war including Jerusalem (where, in fact, just over 100,000 Arabs lived in 1948) which is impossible as we all know!!
In fact there was a huge pogrom against the Jews of Baghdad. Estimates of Jewish dead range from 600 on the low side to almost 900 on the high side. The pogrom was the side effect of a pro-Nazi coup against the King led by Rashid Ali al Gaylani. The British put the 1941 rebellion down with the help of 4,000 UK trained bedouin troops of the Jordanian Arab Legion led by Colonel John Bagett Glubb who wrote of the incident in his famous 1956 publication A Soldier with the Arabs.
Cecil Roth is one of the most highly regarded historians of medieval Jewry and is trusted due to his highly respected scholarship.
In fact you did claim the Indians killed millions of whites. Take your medication. Like my manic-depressive roomate you say and do things that you don't remember. I hear Tegritol is good stuff. Prolixen will make you sick.
Lillienthal is a right-wing moron who published his nonsense with Regnery in 1951 called The Zionist Connection. Regnery is barely a shade to the left of Noontide Press. Lillienthal lies when he says that the doors were open to Jewish refugees. Everyone knows they were not and there was an amendment attached to the 1948 immigration bill by Pat McCraren which effectively excluded Jews from emigrating to the US by writing them out of the criterion for those allowed to get visas to come to the US. This effectively overturned Trumans executive order of 1946 allowing about 160,000 Jews into the US out almost half a million Jews languishing in European displaced persons camps. Zionist efforts to block westward movement of Jews existed but were minor and ineffectual.
It is true the Mossad tried to intimidate Iraqi Jews into emigrating to Israel. There was the synagogue bombing in Baghdad in 1951. There was also a similar incident in Syria at that time. The Moroccans didn't emigrate to Israel until 1967 when that country became difficult for Jews for obvious reasons. There were over 250,000 Moroccan Jews many of whom went to either Israel or France. A small number went to North America.
Mike you truely are a hateful racist and it is obvious to all who post on this thread. Further, you don't know your facts. You are an angry person. You need to find professional help.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-29 00:42:33

Oh, no, are you thinking of leaving, LoneWolf ?Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-28 15:00:05

recursive prophet - good thoughts; the lack of civility here is tough to deal with, if one wants to actually engage in a real discussion that is.
Of course, the worst offender here is the one that shrieks the loudest and longest and is the obviously the least informed. Perhaps if he is ignored consistently he will eventually grow bored and leave. One can only hope. :)Posted by wolf on 2007-03-28 13:57:48

RP, first of all the issues are serious that we are debating and stupidly labelling the debaters as adolescent doesn't change that. It is true that I never intended to bring up many of these issues and was responding to shitcago's attacks. But that doesn't stop other people from bringing up any other issues they want to. And I engage them in plenty of other issues too. So stop being a big liberal crybaby and get back in the ring.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-28 13:34:22

Well, that's it for me. You guys are on the economic version of the Titanic, and will still be staging your prolonged hissy fits as the leaky pipe youPosted by recursive prophet on 2007-03-28 12:58:55

Check out today's ihr.org. Professor Daniel McGowan has an article on "What does 'holocaust denial' really mean ? Then The History of Israel Reconsidered by iilan Pappe, then Study Finds One-Third in DC Illiterate (!) then German Neo-Nazi Fear Over Police Cadets, they broke up a talk in Germany by one of the Shoah Business fakers ! HOORAY !
Chicago Colostomy Bag's rebuttal "Lyaah ! Rayshist ! Fayshist ! Auntey-Seamite !" This ihr site is an ocean of fresh air ! Check it out ! Also the Noontide Press, their publishing arm. Chicago Cabbie has endorsed them and is one of their biggest customers.
Chicago Colostomy Bag's rebuttal "Lyaah ! Rayshist ! Fayshist ! Narzi ! Auntey-Semenite !" Really impressive comeback.
TexMexASS's comeback " Your a racist ! I hate all A-rabs !"Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-28 11:33:04

As I have often said what do the Me Hi Can peepuls do except excrete and reproduce ? Rachel Corrie was not a hippie, you fucking moron with the colostomy bag over your hemorrhoids looking face. She was MURDERED by that Israeli miltary goon. One doesn't have to be a pwogwessive to recognize that FACT, just a thinking human being. The rest of the planet gets along except Arabs, in the Congo where they have killed five million of each other in the last three years ?, in China where the government has killed over one hundred million of its own people since 1949 ?, in Rwanda ?, in East Timor where 1/3rd of the total population was killed by the US financed RIGHTWING Indonesian Junta? , in Indochina where WE killed four million?, in Ireland where they have been killing each other for centuries?, in Europe where until 1945 they had killed two hundred million of EACH OTHER from the 30 Years War to WW2 ?, maybe in Bosnia ?, in Singapore/Malaysia where they had to split up after genocidal riots in 1965 ?, in India/Pakistan where millions have died since 1947 Partition ?, in the USA where tens of millons of Indians were killed and ten million or more Africans enslaved ?, in Guatemala where the RIGHTWING killed 300,000 since 1954 US overthrow of democratically elected left govt ?, ergo in Chile with tens of thousands either killed or disappeared after US coup in 73 ?, in Me Hi Co where thousands were killed and millions enslaved during 75 year one party PRI rule ?, in Russia where the govt killed 50-100 million in just the 20th century ? where else has there been such great peace ? Oh, wow us with your history, TacoCon. No wonder why we are losing so badly in Iraq with Army career morons like TexASS or is it MEXASS making up the military morons there. TexASS's Mama Puta told me that he was a botched abortion.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-28 11:05:46

I didn't realize "palestinians" had the wherewithal to form a stock exchange Cabdriver. I will have to check that out. Free trade zones are a great idea but no reasonable businessman is going to invest in the PA with Hamas running the show. The other countries offering free trade zones are suicide bomber free zones. That will tip any prudent investors decison as far away from the "PA" as possible. So once again Arab ignorance will keep them in medival living conditions which will be blamed on the West.
Boring, racist, and ignorant. What a combo BM. I would bet money you were picked on as a child.
Somehow the rest of the planet manages to get along despite our social, political, and economic differences except...... Arabs. A plethora of ethnic groups have lacked an autonomous country for far longer than the so called "palestinians" but don't strap bombs to their kids chests and send them off to kill civilians. Fuck Haji and the horse he rode in on. If that makes me racist so be it.
As I have stated before what in the hell have Arabs done to deserve anything but condemnation, retaliation and to be driven from the rest of humanity? Haji is hard core when making videos, marching in Gaza, or blowing up schools but when you catch them they cry like little girls.
I despise the terrorism, the mindset, the brutality, the ignorance, the dictatorships, the religion, and the incessant whining of their supporters. One hippie chick was not bright enough to get out of the way of a D-9 Cat bulldozer. How fucking stupid can you be. And you people wonder why people don't respect progressives. My dog is smart enough to avoid traffic. Pussies......Posted by texasindependent on 2007-03-28 10:07:19

The Arab States NEVER expelled any Jews, see British Jewish journalist Marion Wolfson's Zion In Babylon. The Israelis MADE up that 800,000 figure to try to balance out the 750,000 to actually more
than 1,000,000 Palestinian Arabs that they either expelled or were forced to flee during the fighting. 99% of all Arab or Oriental Jews came from three countries, Iraq, Yemen and Morocco. They actually
encouraged their Jews to stay but the fascist Ben Gurion needed them because he was not getting enough warm bodies from the West. There was never any movement by any of the three Arab states to expel their Jews. Chicago Cabbie's absolute refusal to condemn the blatant anti-Arab racism of TexASS is glaring. The only governmental pressure in the Arab world came in Egypt after the Israeli-UK-Franco invasion and a few thousand Jews did leave there after 1956. The total Arab Jewish emigration to Israel over many years never exceeded 600,000 and unlike the Palestinian expulsions, this 99% voluntary. By the way, Portnoy Shitbag, I NEVER wrote that the Indians killed millions of WHITES, in fact they largely killed EACH OTHER, particularly out here in the West. The story about Noontide Press author is utter bullshit, a fairy tale alongside the alleged participation of the Grand Mufti in the "holocaust" which never happened, neither the Mufti's participation or the "holocaust." He did visit Germany as did Sadat and others. All the Arabs and all the Irish were very anti-UK for rather obvious reasons. The story of alleged pogroms against Jews in Arab countries after WW1 is pure bullshit. In Palestine itself for every Arab atrocity there was at least one Zionist atrocity and usually more. Chicago Cabbie apparently is another one of the thousands of Israeli shitbags over driving taxis and doing their dirty work for the Chosen State. Cecil Roth and other historians of the Jewish Establishment are not to be trusted. In fact the Inquisition killed MILLIONS, not thousands, but Shitcago Cabbie with the David Irving pockmarked hemorrhoids face is only interested in Jewish deaths. To keep his pretense of his peepul as perpetual victims. Also as FDR noted to Morris Ernst, after WW2 the whole world was open to the Jews, see Alfred M. Lilienthal's What Price Israel ? and The Other Side Of The Coin, two excellent books. Lilienthal has a chapter in the latter on Israeli anti-semitism detailing Israeli Ashkenazi mistreatment of Arab Jews recruited en masse to Israel and in the former Lilienthal details how the Zionist organizations did everything possible to PREVENT the European Displaced Jews from going to anyplace BUT Palestine. As usual Shitcago is lying. On the Palestine figures there were no areas that the Zionist paramilitary forerunners of the IDF did not enter and as of January 1949 UNRRA was feeding over 950,000 Palestinians in refugee camps. That by my math is far closer to one million than 750,000. There were about 160,000 Arabs left behind, for a change the cabbie has a correct figure but there were actually 1,350,000 Arabs before the Partition, not 1, 225,000 as cabbie incorrectly maintains. Notice a very familiar tactic here typical of the hysterical male members of his tribe, exaggerate their own figures and minimize everyone else's. Chicago cabbie with the taxi excreting shiksa, I'm always happy to wipe your dirty ass in public. You are a prime of the type of mentality that perjured themselves by the many hundreds in the Nuremberg, Malmedy, Auschwitz, Eichmann and Demjanjuk show trials. You wouldn't know the truth if it bit you on that ugly face of yours.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-28 09:03:35

Tex,
In fact the PA does have a stock exchange. The last time I checked, which was a little over a year ago, there were about 25 firms listing. Most of these firms are Jordanian or Saudi. The market cap is not great. There is a big PA development agency created in 1998 called PIEFZA. They have tried to create industrial free trade zones in Gaza and the West Bank with WB and other Donor funding for building closely clustered industrial parks for foreign businesses to locate, mostly light industrial like garment assembly, food processing, beverage bottling, and pharmacuiticals. There has been some success. An end to the occupation and political problems could lead to more investment from mostly the Gulf Oil states and Jordan.
BM, your figures are wrong on everything. The expulsion of Palestinians actually exceeds the number of Palestinians in the areas where the fighting took place for the year 1948. There were only 1.25 million Arabs in Palestine in that year to start with and about 25 to 30% were in areas the IDF never entered. In addition, over 160,000 Arabs were left in the expanded Jewish state. About 750,000 were expelled but no more. This would mean that 910,000 were in areas attacked by the Haganah with the remaining 340,000 (that is the 1.25 million minus those either expelled from or allowed to remain within areas siezed by the Haganah) left outside these areas that ultimately fell under either Egyptian or Jordanian occupation in Gaza and the WB respectively. Geez, this demographic thing makes me feel like I'm arguing with a Palestinian verstion of Joan Peters!! Learn to count before making wild assertions about history and historic events.
The Arab states DID expel about 800,000 Jews. Just because there was Mossad agitation in Iraq (including a synagogue bombing in Baghdad) and Syria, doesn't mean that there was NO Arab state hostility and attacks on Jews. The unprovoked Baghdad pogrom against the Jewish community there killed about 900 Jews and destroyed most of their commercial property worth millions. This was done by Noontide Press darling and pro-Nazi agent Rashid Ali Gaylani. His uprising was crushed by the UK with the help of several thousand Jordanian Legion troops led by the incomparable John Bagett Glubb. The Arab states in the immediate aftermath of WWI began to make life untenable for the long standing and often prosperous and influential Jewish communities in their countries.
The Jews didn't go to Palestine out of religious motivation. Assholes like the BM (Bowel Movement?) don't understand that they were literally forced to go there out of desparation. The doors were closed elsewhere. This is a fact and is widely acknowledged as such. Of course, you won't read it in the Noontide Press publications for pencil dick morons with dog breathe and zits on their saggy pones.
Yes the Spanish Inquisition killed more Jews that did the Arabs. The Spaniards killed over 100,000 Jews in 1492 while expelling and converting another 250,000. This is according to expert Cecil Roth. Yitzak Baer who wrote The Jews of Christian Spain cites similar figures and also notes the thousands killed in the 1391 pogrom in Spain.
BM, your racism is more appalling every day. BTW, the number of white settlers killed by the Indians NEVER approached the millions.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-27 23:23:45

Where you guys get the energy and motivation for all this truly intrigues me. Some really good posts in this thread, but as always the topic gets overwhelmed with other ongoing issues. Wonder whats going to happen when the continued growth/debt cycle finally reaches its limits? Anyone read a game plan for that little segue? When can be argued, but at some point the available resources will require consumption be curtailed. No more economic growth. What then?Posted by recursive prophet on 2007-03-27 20:22:23

Oil is enough in this context, asshole. What do you think keeps our economy running ? Israel expelled over one million Arabs in 1948 and half a million Arabs in 1967. You are right that alleged expulsion of Jews from Arab countries was not a big deal because it never happened. Israel targeted three Arab countries with large Jewish populations, Morocco, Yemen and Iraq and the Israelis used every method to spark an exodus including bombing synagogues, see Marion Wolfson's book on this. By the way, Dubai has a very good infrastructure as do most Arab states including Iraq before the US invasion, before the criminal US imposted UN sanctions Iraq had the best medical care system in the Middle East. No one ever threatened to wipe Israel off the map, that was a lie when alleged about Nasser in the 60s and a big lie when alleged about the President of Iran now. He urged the end to a Jewish state which is proper since 25% of the population in Israel is NonJewish. I actually read what he said and didn't rely on the neocon whore media like you do. Your people are the most violent and racist in the world, Spain killed thirty million women as witches, thirty million black cats because of the evil eye superstitution and the cats got revenge as the rat population exploded and wiped out half of Europe. Spain killed another 100 million Indians south of the US border, 10-35 million Indians north of the US border and 7-8 million Indians in Haiti & the Dominican Republic. Chomsky, Ward Churchill and others have documented the bloody history of your people, TexASS or is it really MEXASS ? Then the Indians themselves killed millions of each other and whites too. Since you are at least 60% Indian from your self-description you are the descendant of the two most violent groups on earth. You brag about being brown but you indiscriminately murdered brown in Iraq even they like you are the color of excrement. You committed numerous war crimes in Iraq and you are too cowardly to give your name & serial number so we can have you prosecuted. There traditionally has been much less Arab hatred of Jews than western Christian hatred of Jews. Your Spanish people killed many more Jews than all Arabs combined ever have and Nazi Israel has killed many more Arabs than Arabs have killed Israelis as Carter noted. If you want to throw AWAY your money on Israeli bonds that's no skin off my nose. By the way, Palestine has been on maps FOR CENTURIES GOING BACK TO THE CRUSADES AND FOR ALL FOUR CENTURIES IT WAS RULED AS A PROVINCE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE. NOAM CHOMSKY AND NORMAN FINKELSTEIN TOTALLY DESTROYED THE RACIST THESIS OF THE JOAN PETERS BOOK DENYING ARABS IN PALESTINE RIGHT IHERE IN ITT IN SEPTEMBER 1984 AND THEN IN BOOKS. THEY DO HAVE A COMMON CULTURE AND A COMMON LANGUAGE AND 80% A COMMON RELIGION, THE OTHER 20% ARE CHRISTIANS. IF SOMEONE STOLE YOUR LANDS UNDER A RACIST CHOSEN PEOPLE CONCEPT YOU WOULD HATE THEM TOO REGARDLESS OF THEIR RACE OR RELIGION OR NATIONAL ORIGIN.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-27 11:16:43

Dubai has no industry, no manufacturing, no high tech, or services. They have oil. Period. I can find plenty of other investment opportunities in reasonable countries that are not infested with terrorist supporters.
Palestine is a farce, a fictional entity manufactured to give a "cause" for anti-semetic terrorists. Is there a "palestinian" language? A "palestinian" culture? Did someone forget to put the country of Palestine on the maps long before 1948? No. Its a sham perpetuated by militarily incompetent Arab nations to support their institutionalized hatred of Jews and to "wipe Israel off the map".
The expulsion of Jews from Arab countries was not a big deal now it's time for the expulsion of Arabs from the Jewish country. Fuck haji. I see the Arab for what he is...... an incompetent thug, a coward, and the cause of 22 of the current 26 ongoing conflicts occuring across the planet.Posted by texasindependent on 2007-03-27 10:47:18

You don't have to account for Butz, just try reading him. You lied last night about his getting fired from Northwestern and that is typical of the way you operate. He doesn't need some shitty Dirtbagowitz type lawyer. As far as who I am to reject US govt sources ? Is that supposed to be a serious question ? I could cite chapter and verse on all US Govt policies, foreign and domestic, to show a total lack of credibility, not least with the CIA. If your 2-3% figure is correct it still validates my point about a quarter trillion or 250 Billion in US giveaways to Israel. At at least 5 bil a year and it's been much more on certain years that totals at least 200 billion since 1967----forty years times 5 bil a year, do the math, dummy. The official 5 bil annual appropriation is not the full story either because there are always emergency aid measures & other ploys to soak the taxpayer courtesy of our AIPAC Congress.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-27 10:24:47

Who are you kidding, you fucking racist moron ? In Dubai alone they have 200 50 story skyscrapers being built. Why do you think Halliburton is moving there. Even the Palestinian economy would be productive if it hadn't been permanently shut down most of the past two decades by the fascist, racist, Nazi Israel. If you live under occupation and you have no rights and your land is being expropriated and you get nothing for your high taxes and your schools are deliberately starved and your women die trying to get through interminable roadblocks to give birth, even a fucking mongoloid shit in his panties racist beaner piece of garbage like you would throw bombs. The rest of us are tired about hearing of a "holocaust" that never happened (even the very name is a lie since Jews did NOT die by fire in WW2) and we are sick of now having had A QUARTER OF A TRILLION DOLLARS, THAT'S 250 BILLION DOLLARS STOLEN FROM US AND GIVEN TO NATIONAL SOCIALIST ISRAEL. I'm sorry a few hundred thousand Jews died of all causes in Europe during WW2 and if it reached a million I'd be surprised but whatever it is it doesn't justify Israel's barbaric policies since 1947, not merely 1967. The reason the Israeli military is the most effective is because the US TOTALLY SUBSIDIZES AND SUPPLIES IT, THEY EVEN HAVE GOTTEN WEAPONS SYSTEMS THAT THE US MILITARY DOESN'T GET IT. JEWISH TRAITORS OF THE POLLARD-ROSENBERG ILK HELPED STEAL THE NUCLEAR SECRETS HERE
AND IN FRANCE TO GIVE ISRAEL THE SEVERAL ILL-GOTTEN NUKES IT HAS. It's interesting that Chicago poses as a leftist but in reality supports the most racist Zionist policies and NEVER REBUKES YOU FOR YOUR VEHEMENT ANTI-ARAB RACISM. Lebanon had a thriving economy until Israel started destroying it in the 70s by promoting civil war by financing the rightist Christian Falangist scum and directly bombing & invading it. Israel WAS VERY CLOSELY LINKED WITH APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA AS BOTH NELSON MANDELA AND BISHOP TUTU HAVE REPEATEDLY NOTED FOR DECADES NOW. Israel has sold arms to the Argentine Nazi Junta, the Guatemalan Nazi Junta, Pinochet in Chile, the Contra fascists in Nicaragua, the El Salvadorean fascist Junta and down the line to Asia & Africa. See Jane Hunter's book on the Israeli-South African connection. Also Saudi Arabia, Quatar, Bahrein, the whole eastern Gulf is exploding with growth & investment, Kuwait, etc., so your racist slur about camels shows what a piece of lying shit you are. People should be free to call you anything. After your hilarious condemnation of Mencken's "racism" followed by several anti-Arab racist outbursts you have nothing to stand on. The aid we give has a zero effect on the US economy EXCEPT as an unnecessary drain. Bush 1 kept Israel out of the first Gulf Massacre precisely it is a liability in the Middle East. The raid on Iraq was wrong but Israel has now degenerated to the point where Hezbollah beat their asses good last summer ! The mighty Judenrat Supermen are no more.
Noontide Press has far more credibility than the CIA. It is far from the only alternative reading source I use but 80% of is very good and I can ignore the 20% that isn't.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-27 09:49:39

Mikey
I would take investment advice from the homeless before I would take it from you. Israel is the only option for investment in the Eastern markets. Palestinians don't have a stock exchange. Although it would be funny to own 500 shares of Achmed's camels.
If the Arabs would create something to invest in I would look closely at investing capital in other countries in the region. But suicide bomb belts and hatred are their only commodities. So they will continue to fail and continue to remain ignorant savages.
Cabdriver is right the Israeli military is by far the most effective in the region. They have the capability to design and manfacture effective indiginous military hardware. The IAF raid on Saddams French built nuclear plant demonstrated the effectiveness of the pilots. Our expenditures are a small part of Israel's total GDP and the aid we give provides thousands of American manufacturing jobs. Good trade off. If we can triple the amount we will piss Mikey off enough so that he might blow an O-ring and choke on his own bile.
I am so tired of hearing about Palestinians. Why should we help terrorists? Why should one dollar of my taxes pay for Palestinian hatred. Fuck haji. He want's to vist Allah I want to help him along the way as quickly as possible.Posted by texasindependent on 2007-03-27 08:57:50

I can't account for Butz and his inane rantings. Thankfully for him he had the right to free expression and a good Jewish ACLU lawyer. The figures on Israeli aid are ridiculous and utterly unsubstantiated. I know they are factually incorrect because I have checked generally anti-Israel sources, the only ones I actually read, and have never seen such inflated figure. STOP READING THAT SHITTY NOONTIDE PRESS. They are stupid Neo-Nazi liars who will mislead you time and again. The correct figure for US/Israeli bilateral government to government aid flows is slightly in excess of $105 billion. That is all.
I also wonder who you are to reject the CIA factbook or any other US government source. I will check and see the US State Department figures. I'm sure they are more reliable than those of Noontide Press and its affiliates. Shameful little Nazi putz that Francis Parker Yockey.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-27 01:06:59

Butz was never dismissed from his position as Professor of Electrical Engineering and is listed as a Professor Emeritus if you go to the Northwestern University website. Some people may have wanted to get rid of him but they couldn't because he had tenure and was an excellent teacher. This just proves what a liar you are. Go to pages 295-296 of the third revised edition of The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century wherein Butz quotes from the book Bar-Kokhba by the archaeologist Yigael Yadin who quotes from the Talmud and the Midrash Rabbah which claims that the Romans killed either "4 billion" or "40 million" or "800 million" Jews at the battle of Bethar ! I was wrong about the 600 Billion figure but the reasonableness of my comment stands. He references the Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 4, page 735 and the Babylonian Talmud93b or page 627 in the translation edited by I. Epstein.
That source is wrong on the 105 billlion figure nor has the US EVER been cool to Israel since 1967. Before that hundreds of billions of German Govt reparations and tax exempt US Jewish contributions went to Israel. Israel was never even a state during WW2. They as a state should have received nothing from West Germany. The CIA "Fact" Book is not reliable at all nor is the CIA itself. You only assert that lie because that is your source. Those figures you quote are way understated as to the amount of US aid to Israel. If that 5 billion figure is correct and I have reason to believe that is understated, but if it is remotely correct it accounts for 200 billion of the 250 billion or quarter trillion and that massive aid did not just begin in fall 73.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-26 17:33:33

Talk about pulling numbers out of one's ass, BM, you're the chief. The CIA fact book is totally reliable and is close in its claims to other reliable sources. The US has not given the State of Israel $5 billion annually since 1967. Naseer Aruri, a Palestinian writer who is as hostile to Israel as anyone, cites in his work, The Obstruction of Peace, that Israel has received about $105 billion between 1949 and 2003. The US was somewhat chilly towards Israel and only began the special relationship with the end of the 1973 War when the US delivered arms to Israel that turned the tide of the war against Syria and Egypt. Much of the rest of Israel's money comes from private donations by Jewish, and now Christian Zionist, communities.
Arthur Butz is a moron. He was dismissed from his teaching post in the engineering department here in Evanston's Northwestern University. The regents decided that an institution with the prestige of NWU shouldn't retain a discredited holocaust denier.Good for them!!Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-26 16:43:34

You can control your actions, regardless of how stressed it gets. You can't control your emotions because those are involuntary but you can control if you are going to act on those or any emotions. That we DO have control over. The CIA Fact Book is worthless, I read the entry for the US and found it laughable. In either the Talmud or one ancient Jewish Book the estimate was NOT six billion but SIX HUNDRED BILLION. Butz brought this out in The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century. I can find out exactly which one and get back to you. Your peepul have some world class records in the lying department as even many Jews I know acknowledge. The fact that we have given 250 BILLION dollars to Israel and largely since 1967 as well as the most favorable special free trade terms and a considerable amount of off the books money not even included in the annual five billion dollar ripoff. That annual five bil has been going on since the 67 war. That's 200 billion right there. Off the books funds and forgiveness of loans easily gets the other 50 billion.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-26 16:28:35

Your reasoning is about as stupid as it gets. Obviously it is normal to panic in emergency situations. What do you think adrenaline does? It sure doesn't calm you down!! The truth or falsehood of the statement used to incite is utterly irrelevant. Obviously false incitement is worse than truthful incitement but the person who shouts an alarm carelessly should be prosecuted because he caused the panic. People are forced to panic in an emergency precisely because they are desparate to save their lives. I think you shrink from making the arguments because you can't and don't even fully understand them. You subsititute name dropping for actual thought. This is useless and silly.
The 2% figure is totally acurate. According to the current CIA fact book, the current Israeli GDP is just over $140 billion US dollars. The total amount of US aid to Israel is about $5 billion. The latter is between 2% and 3% of the former. No one ever made a claim about six billion anything, BM you are the exaggerator.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-26 15:57:48

No, the recent study I read gave it as exactly 99%. I have seen no evidence to the contrary. Israel has always been the neighborhood bully, thanks for your concession there, but it's far from safe since it creates the enemies that will destroy it. The Israeli economy is totally parasitic, that 2% figure is another big lie like the "six million" Jews allegedly killed in WW2. One ancient Jewish biblical type source actually gave 600 billion as their death in the old days ! Typical of the exaggerators and perjurers in this one group. The blame doesn't go to people who yelled fire, you moron, it goes to the people who set the fire or the owners who were negligent in preventing one. You can't punish speech because of "lethal incitement" since nothing a rabble rouser says FORCES you or anyone to undertake ANY actions. Only the people who undertake the criminal ACTIONS should be punished. Don;t waste my time reciting the moronic laws on the books and their unjust prosecutions. As I have demonstrated AND referenced for your further reading so no one has to take my word as the end all, Oliver Wendell Shit In His Pants was wrong. See Oliver Wendell Holmes:Destroyer of American Law, by attorney Thomas Bowden of Baltimore, available from the Ayn Rand Bookstore in audio form. The peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan were bad ideas because they strictly tactical maneuvers for Israel to continue its ceaseless occupation and ongoing aggression against the Palestinians and Lebanon. It is not normal to panic in an emergency situation, it is normal not to panic so you can preserve your life. The only issue here would be one of fraud if the statement is untrue, if not, there is no issue. If there are to be prosecutions the people who stampede should be prosecuted and the owners IF they maintained unsafe conditions.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-26 15:33:12

In the first place it is both involuntary and normal to panic in a dangerous situation. Also, those who don't panic can be killed by those who do. Either way no one "deserves" to die in that situation and the blame goes to the one who yells fire. Property has nothing to do with it. Here in Chicago a similar thing occured at the E2 night club in the South Loop. 21 people were killed in a panic and made rush to exit the premesis because someone yelled that anthrax toxin had been relaeased in the club. Of course this was wrong but the issue wasn't whether or not the claim was false but the lethal effect of the incitement. Speech can have the effect of actual behaviour or worse. The individual was prosecuted accordingly. So was the Club owner who found in severe violation of the City safely code on several counts.
The Israeli economy isn't parasitic even though it gets substantial aid. The total value of the US annual aid package is only about 2% of Israel's GDP so obviously there has to be mostly trade and investment activity proping up the economy. Israel trades with the US and the EU but also with China and the rest of East Asia as well as India. She also hosts a lot of FDI and invests abroad as well including in the US. Biologic, here in the Chicago area, is one of their companies that has much US participation. Israel doesn't need a US presence in the Gulf region. The idea that the US is in the Persian Gulf on behalf of Israeli Security is one of the most illogical and senseless lies of the modern age. What does Israel need with the US and its force in the Persian Gulf when it has over 200 deliverable nuclear bombs and a technologically advanced airforce that is the best and most sophisticated and operated by the world's best pilots (a US assessment not an Israeli one). All the militaries of the Arab world combined have no real military option against Israel with or without the US presence. Why Israel would go to all the trouble to bring the US in at this time makes no sense. In addition, Egypt and Jordan both have peace aggreements signed. Israel has always been safe and didn't invite the US into the area for added security.
The average IQ in Israel is higher that 99 I can assure you.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-26 14:06:51

The Blue Dogs are the biggest single caucus in the House Dems. Israel is a shit investment all the way around because it is a total parasite economy. see the website of Israel Shamir in Haifa. I did address your fire statement, it is only fraud if there is no fire, if people are stupid enough to rush out mindlessly they get exactly what they deserve. The real crime is the fraud iif there is no fire. I already gave you the book where you can reference Rothbard's statement in full and I gave you the outline of his argument. Free speech is invariably tied in with private property rights, on someone else's property your speech is considerably more limited than on your own if it is absolute. If I get up and urge you to burn down a building I have committed no crime but IF you take my advice you have. People are not automatons, they do not have to stampede out, if there's a crime here it is solely on the stampeders, not on our free speech. By the way, TexASS MORON, regardless of your stupid views on automation and free trade, most Dems in 1993 voted against NAFTA, Clinton won it with Rep votes. As usual you have the facts wrong. If it wasn't for the massive US & European aid & special trading concessions, Israel's economy would be down the toilet. They have plenty of hi-tech people true but their actual credit standing as Chomsky noted would be at the Bangladesh level. The last sentence of Chicago's posting above is true but this will all go down the drain if the US invades Iran to do Israel's dirty work and if Israel doesn't get off the dime in negotiations with the Palestinians. Israel is 100% to blame for the stalemate and as the "holocaust" big lie becomes ever more discredited Israel has had it. Since the average IQ in Israel is 99 and they have their paranoid Masada complex, I'm not optimistic.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-26 13:35:24

I really don't of any "hippies" who know of much less report economic statistics. I do, however, tend to consult such sources as the US government's Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Congressional Budget Office as well as other respected sources. Labor productivity is the result of many things. Technology is one key source but there are others. Lean production, as labor activist and writer Kim Moody (not a hippy) puts it, is also due to employers downsizing the workforce while overburdening workers with more work while paying less for it. This has overwhelmingly added to the massive growth in output/manhour and a reduction in unit costs. As far as the IT revolution goes, many economists of all tendencies have said that while there was a definite contribution, its impact on overall US productivity is exaggerated. Much of the productivity increases were confined to certain industries like finance and certain other services that don't make up the bulk of the US GDP.
In addition, NAFTA, a bipartisan cause because of its corporate nature, didn't kill off as much US manufacturing as the technological advances you mentioned might have done. Some economists have pointed to the massive amount of manufacturing still done here in the US but this seems misleading. I always thought the ratio of domestic manufactured goods/US GDP has been steadily declining. One thing I discovered was that the BLS includes in its manufactured goods statistics is food processing of all types, non-food agricultural products such as fertilizers, pharmacuticals, tobacco processing and cigarette manufacturing. Much of this has become extremely low wage with an increasing amount done by immigrant labor especially in meat packing. Such circumstances have kept this sector, which is now growing, from being offshored as opposed to other sectors like consumer durables. Also, the 12% of US GDP now contributed by the US Manufacturing sector may only count US resident manufacturers and not that produced by FDI. In this case the dollar value of US manufacturing is about $1.5 trillion with the remaining $3 trillion as FDI. In any case we now host more FDI than we have abroad and most manufacturing done here, two-thirds of it, is by foreign investors.
Israel's economic boom is due almost entirely to high tech in the fields of IT software and pharmacuticals and medical equipment. Massive amounts of FDI by INTEL in the late 1980s and early 1990s encouraged numerous Israeli startups and spinoffs. This led the early globalization of the Israeli economy which many writers correctly view as a stimulous to the OSLO diplomacy of the early 1990s. The TASE actually handles very little high tech stocks which are mostly traded on the NASDEQ. This is due both to cumbersome regulations and the small relative size of the Israeli economy (the total Dollar value of Israeli IT firm market capitalization exceeded half the Israeli GDP as early as four years ago.)Israeli capitalism is more globalized than even US capitalism.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-26 12:57:47

The problem with hippies reporting economic statistics is in the ideology. Productivity is influenced by technological changes to the market or by changes to the manufacturing capability not the emotional states of workers. Without a radical new technological breakthrough the current growth rate of 1.5 percent will remain stable.
As productivity increases the number of drones neccessary to push buttons decreases thus increasing unemployment. So yes a large increase in productivity can be harmful to the economy as a whole.
Productivity growth has slowed due to a severe loss of manufacturing capability due to Democratic imposition of NAFTA. As manaufacturing jobs and physical plants are removed to Mexico the total capability of the market to produce goods decreases thus the total of available growth in producitivity must also decrease. The upswing in productivity in the late 90's is attributable directly to the introduction of the Internet and its fundemental changes to the business environment. WIth the introduction of robotic production in the early 80's we saw a similar spike.
Good point Cabdriver. The TASE or Tel Aviv Stock Exchange is one of the finest sources of long term capital growth. The Makam or their T-Bill offers a higher interest rate somewhere over 4 percent as compared to around 2 percent for a US T-Bill. And while higher rates can be found in the more exotic markets TASE has proven the best long term option for secure reasonable growth. While I am not dumping my Treasury securities I am always looking for better profits.Posted by texasindependent on 2007-03-26 12:16:58

Only a few Dems are blue dogs. The voters voted against Republicans more than for Democrats. They also voted against the War in Iraq and against the increasing wealth and income gap in the US or as they put it "the disappearance of the middle class" which they think will be addressed best by tariffs and a cut in bloated CEO salaries. People are outraged by the maldistribution of wealth and rightly see it as a threat to democracy along with the Bush attacks on civil liberties.
You didn't address my point about the OWH statement. If people are trampled to death in a crowded public place because of some irresponsible incitement to panic the truth or falsehood or "fraud" as you put it is irrelevant. If your wife was killed in such a frenzied rush for the exits as a result of some idiot yelling fire would you really care whether or not there was an actual fire? Isn't his behaviour more relevant to the issue. And what the hell does property have to do with any of this. Instead of telling me about Rothbard or some other moron why don't you recapitulate his argument. How does Rothbard argue against the claim by OWH? You haven't told us. It seems that individual rights stop where the rights of others begin. You have no right to jeopordize another person's safety. Our laws include charges like "conduct regardless of life", "incitement", and "reckless endangerment" to name but a few. Freedom isn't license. You MUST respect the rights of others.
Government ownership is not socialism. It's just government ownership!! The government in this sense is not really any different than any other entity. In many societies state participation in the economy has helped to develop a vibrant, richly capitalized, and successful capitalist economy that is highly globalized. Israel, your favorite country, is only one stunning example of what I mean. From a somewhat autarchic state capitalist model from the Yishuv days until the global recession of the early 1980s, Israel and its more than $150 billion GDP has become the very epitome of neo-liberal capitalism. Over a fifth fo Israel's gross fixed capital formation consists of Foreign Direct Investment while exports represent more than 60% of GDP. Israel's high tech companies that trade exclusively on the Stock exchanges other than the TASE represent less than 15% of the total number of Israeli firms but almost half the total Israeli corporate market capitalization.
The extent of Israel's globalization is proportionately greater than the US by some indicators. Until the 1980s, US imports and exports never exceeded 13% of total GNP. Now it is over 20% and climbing. These two economies have much in common in terms of their patterns of capitalist development. That began as somewhat autarchic with a large government role (Israel's was much greater than the US where state ownership was always miniscule if at all) and ended up highly globalized and privatized. Capitalism is not a static system defined by absolute principles and dogmas but a highly diverse system which develops over time and incorporates all the aspects of society including the state. This point is lost on the Libertarians and other dogmatists.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-26 11:14:37

If someone falsely cries fire in a crowded theatre or a noncrowded one they are commiting fraud on the other patrons and or owners. Holmes used that bad example as a rationale for limiting free speech but as Rothbard demonstrates in For A New Liberty he's wrong, of course if there are also deaths that's an additional criminal liability which in no way obviates the point that I was making. Your smoking and other examples are pathetic, the tobacco companies have no more liability for smokers than the gun manufacturers have for people who misuse firearms, everyone who is sentient has known for at least 50 years of the dangers of smoking and the only ones responsible for gun deaths are the punks who pull the triggers when committing crimes, people who shoot them in self-defense are fine. The prohibitionist mentality whether for the 100 year failed drug war, alcohol, guns, tobacco, you name it is wrong. En toto. Jon, only rich people run for President and for 99% of all political offices, that's not even an issue. Socialism, Chicago Moron, IS government ownership. PERIOD. The rest of your Marxian premised class warfare garbage should be ignored and check out Reisman's Capitalism. I realized there are mostly collectivist-statists who post here but you might want to recheck your premises anyway. Who wants the rich left morons undercutting the system that has made them wealthy ? The only anti-Bush thing last fall was anti-war and anti-Bush's attacks on civil liberties. It was NOT a vote for socialism of any sort, most new Dems are Blue Dogs.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-26 10:04:23

Some interesting things to consider about US trade with China and its effects on US employment could put things in better perspective. In the first place the US trade deficit is now nearing $1 trillion or about 7% of the current GDP with manufactured goods imports now making up more than 80% of the total balance of trade deficit. Despite this, and the fact that we imported about $1.4 trillion in manufactured goods, there is still about $4.5 trillion in manufactured goods that we produce in a year. About $775 billion gets exported so there is a just about a $625 billion trade deficit in manufactured goods. This is hardly the cause of the US decline in manufacturing employment.
Over the past two decades since the recovery from the 1982 recession, US manufacturing productivity has doubled. Output has increased by almost two-thirds while manufacturing employment has dropped by nearly a fifth. Thus, increased efficiency has caused a reduction in US manufacturing employment. There is also the shift in consumption from consumer durables to services. The reduction in demand by the continued disappearance of higher paying jobs and their replacement by lower paying ones has also reduced demand for consumer goods and thus manufacturing employment.
The Bush Administration's charge that the Chinese currency is undervalued is irrelevant. This would only make sense if there was a high degree of Chinese value added in the manufactured exports which there is not. Goods exported from China often contain value added from two or more countries including the US. Most of China's contribution to the value added of its exports is the labor intensive assembly which is notoriously cheap. This is the main reason manufacturers locate there in the first place.
US/Chinese trade isn't the reason for domestic US manufacturing unemployment. It is the globalization practices of US capitalists, such as offshoring production in a global race ot the bottom, and the advent of technologically efficient "lean" production here in the US. It is efforts to successfully boost productivity over the past two decades that have swelled US corporate profits. In a word, productivity is itself to blame for much of the current woes of the US working class. It has reduced manufacturing employment as it always has throughout capitalism's history. This has also caused a precipitous drop in overall US wages by swelling the "reserve army of labor".Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-24 16:52:16

WTHeck, "About 35% of ChinaPosted by Jon B on 2007-03-24 09:41:34

BM,
What property rights are you talking about. If some causes deaths from the trampling of people from a mad rush to the exits because he yelled falsely about some immenant threat in the club, theater or whatever venue he is responsible for their deaths. He failed to regard their rights to safely. He can be criminally liable. This is obvious. Also the government is not socialist nor is the published information it puts out. Socialism is a system not a thing automatically connected to public institutions like the CBO or the IRS.
WTH,
Globalization in the modern sense is not international economic interaction which has always existed but the transnationalization of formerly national economies through foreign direct investment (FDI) by transnational corporations (TNCs) and transnationalized production. It is also epitomised by supra-national governance of the global economy by such undemocratic and unaccountable institutions as the WTO.
I was suprised that the US market is only 35% of all current Chinese exports. The recent Chinese diversification of their portfolio investment is doubtless related to their export market diversification. This is a very bad sign and a possible portend of the decline of the US Dollar. The deficits and growing national debt is doubtless causing the Chinese and others to have second thoughts about the viability of the future US economy. The Chinese have over a $trillion in foreign exchange reserves and can potentially become a major global financial liquidity source. Their ability to affect the world economy by quickly shifting funds aroung is amazing. The US is hosting more foreign investment than it sends abroad. Most of it, about 80%, is portfolio investment because of the need to finance the trade and current account budget deficits. These deficits are costing us jobs and growth every year. The privatization of roads, public works, and lotteries will only shift more wealth from the poor to the rich. They will not spend the wealth to expand GDP and jobs but to speculate further on securities and the equities market. The situation is similar to that which prevailed immediately prior to the crash of 1929. It is very dangerous.
I saw the Smoking Movie. Very funny and painfully accurate.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-24 08:38:39

Cabby,
Globalization is not new. Columbus and other explorers engaged in globalization as has every major nation throughout history. What is new is the manipulation by the U.S. campaign to use it as a ploy for restructuring our society to the benefit of an elite few.
Every day when I hear/read the latest political and economic spin I canPosted by whattheheck on 2007-03-23 17:07:58

blondemike, "Of course, the rich control the state, they control everything and thatPosted by Jon B on 2007-03-23 16:27:18

I wrote that Einstein would be turning over in his grave if you could see mediocre Jews like YOU trying to pose as part of a "brilliant" race. You can't read any straighter than you can think. It's not WalMart's fault if various pwogwessive idiots decide to improperly intervene in on their relationship with their workers to subsidize. Holmes was wrong because if there is a fire, it's fine to say so, if there isn't, then the person yelling fire is committing fraud on the other patrons. So it's not a question of limiting anyone's rights, like all free speech issues it's a property rights issue. Read the Rothbard book and learn something, you empty headed baboon. US Government IS a socialist source. Always seeking to increase their own power like all bureaucrats. Of course, the rich control the state, they control everything and that's how it should be. The poor, the failures have no grounds or reasons to control anything. Are you really this dense ?Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-23 12:37:17

I hope you're not calling Einstein mediocre, BM. That is foolish even for you. You distorted much of what I said anyhow. BTW, I used mostly US Government sources not socialist ragsheets. OWH was right about taxes and free speech. Freedom isn't license. One needs to be considerate of others' rights and a responsible citizen.
Walmart workers are subsidized by local and federal programs. It is Walmart's fault. The government can't abandon the workers and Walmart refuses to take up the slack regardless of the government's action or inaction. Anyhow, the state, as we know, is a tool of the rich who pay more taxies but control a disproportionate share of wealth and income. Their share of tax savings is also a bigger share of their pre-tax gross income than the share for those in the bottom eighty percent of the income scale. This is Bush's favortism of the rich. It is causing more problems than it solves quite aside from being entirely inequitable.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-23 10:50:34

Actually they aren't to rebut your first sentence. But rather than waste further time refuting for the umpteenth time your assertions from your usually unreliable socialist sources like Dollars and Sense, I refer everyone to the George Reisman website and to his magnum opus, Capitalism, which can be read at the site or purchased there or at Amazon, etc. Capitalism is totally about markets and individual freedom, the class stuff was concocted by a very third rate thinker and personal degenerate Karl Marx. Marx hated Jews and Judaism but confused capitalism with both. Absurd idea. He read in the London Library all day while his children starved. Ever since he has been the role model par excellence envy-eaten bums like Chicago Cabbie. Quoting the discredited Oliver Shit In His Pants Holmes lying description of taxation does not an argument make. I recently read that the average IQ in Israel is 99, which explains a lot. There have recently been some long overdue critical books totally dissecting the amoral, statist and pragmatist philosophy of Oliver Shit In His Pants Holmes. Murray Rothbard totally debunked his fire in a crowded theatre nonsense as a free speecj limitation in For A New Liberty, also available from Amazon and others. WalMart workers should not be getting subsidized by the government but that is not WalMart's fault but the wholeassed "pwogwessive" lunatics in state legislatures. WalMart does resort to eminent domain AND THAT IS TOTALLY EVIL. Shitcago repeats the Chimskyite Big Lie that foreign trade is only between the branches of the same companies. Noam Pol Pot Apologist Chimsky has admitted that he knows NOTHING about economics and doesn't want to. The regressive payroll tax was a brainchild of Chicago semi-statist Milton Friedman. The rich pay more taxes so they should get more from the cuts. The trouble is not the cuts but the fact that spending HAS greatly increased more under Bush than FDR and LBJ combined.
As far as the Libertarian Party goes, 99% of libertarians have never supported it. Your flogging a dead horse, another example of "the Jewish genius." Ha ! Mediocre little man with his big colostomy bag, Einstein is rolling over in his grave deeply ashamed of the transparent mediocrity of so many of his beloved peepul.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-23 10:07:40

US tariffs are at an all time historic low. Customs Revenue now comprises less than 5% of the dollar value of total merchandise imports according to the US Customs Service. This is part of the globalization trend. The idea is to import US manufacturing goods back in from China and Mexico so that they are price competitive on the domestic market. Trade is being eclipsed by foriegn direct investment (FDI). Transnational Corporations (TNCs) simply move to the markets they want to sell in and begin to manufacture there through wholly owned local subsidiaries of the parent corporation. About a third of all global trade is intra-firm trade and thus FDI related. Trade has not grown at as fast a rate as FDI over the past twenty years although it has slowed with the general slowdown in global economic activity since 2001.
I really don't know how much more capitalist we can become. US government regulations have been at an all time low as well as the effect rate of taxation. The traditional policy of progressive taxation in the US is all but gone and we have become a nation of haves and have nots. The rich rule the roost!! Total tax revenues as a proportion of the GDP, according to the CBO, dropped from an historic high of almost 21% in the late 1990s to 17.9% in 2002 and is falling fast with the effects of the new tax cuts. The corporate share of total federal tax revenues as a proportion of the US GDP dropped from a peak of about 6% in the early 1950s to about 1.4% currently. The new capital gains tax cuts should drop this ratio even more. The overall corporate share of federal tax revenues has dropped markedly under Bush as well. The regressive payroll tax, which has risen steadily over the past fifty years, has been accounting for a greater and greater share of the federal tax receipts. In addition, stock market values, which exceeded the inflation adjusted value of the GDP for the first time in the late 1990s with the Equities bubble, also contributed to the boost in federal tax revenues and continues to do so more than did real economic growth since 2002 from tax cuts.
Taxation is the price we pay for civilization. It is not theft. We all use public goods and services. The rich are now being subsidized at an alarming rate which is the idea of capitalism. Look at how social programs subsidize the low wages of Walmart workers. Even a somewhat conservative study by Michael J. Hicks of Marshall University in 2005 found that Walmart places an additional average burden of nearly $900 per worker annually on the Medicaid system due to their inadequate health benefits.
Capitalism is not about markets and market activity. It is about class power and class conflict. Today the working class is on its back. The rich have won this round. It is obvious to even conservative thinkers. The Libertarian Party will never have any more political relevance than it now has and that is far to much for most people's taste.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-22 20:38:11

WTH gave a source disputing your claim about the CBO. Can't you even read ? I have given many sources and in particular George Reisman's Capitalism for an encyclopedic refutation of all the fallacies that you have been promoting. Both Bushes and Reagan RAISED tariffs many times, we do not anything remotely approaching free trade or capitalism but again rather than take up the limited space here I've given one source above that will answer all of your questions. Taxes ARE theft, they are extracted at the point of a gun, they are NOT analogous to club dues. "Universal agreement" THERE YOU GO AGAIN ! There obviously isn't any such animal as anyone can tell by checking the refs I've given here and elsewhere. Your refusal to read anything you disagree with is notorious, whether revisionism or libertarianism but somehow you expect we will all bow down to the socialist hacks at Dollars and Sense and the other sources you push...........Right.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-22 09:05:31

You never ever give evidence for your erronious accusation of liar. Calling someone a liar only because they represent the government is childish and dishonest itself. No one else has ever credibly called the CBO's integrity into question and frankly their apporach to the data is more inclusive and reliable than other government agencies like the IRS.
We have real capitalism. How much more real can it get? The tariffs are down. They are down because of all the "free trade" agreements you profess to hate. The reason? US goods manufactured aboad in China and Mexico can re-enter the US practically duty free and thus remain price competitive.
Right now the rich are NOT creating jobs through ANY investment. I've already cited the low annual rates of productive investment growth at being about one quarter of one percent over the past five years since the Bush tax cuts began to take effect.
I'm sorry but taxis are not a form of government theft. They facilitate the economy and even out the necessary infrastructural and social investment in our society. Currently this is done regressively. Tell me why this is wrong rather than refering me to some Libertarian dogma to read which I refuse to do.
We tend to purchase our cars from auctions. No one buys a new cab for $30, 000 or we would go broke. We try to keep all such new cab investments under $3,000. Usually they're old State of Illinois Police Squad Cars. They work fine.
There is universal agreement amoung economists on the stagnant to declining nature of the national median wage. Some left economists like James Cypher, who has a brilliant article in the current issue of Dollars & Sense, point out the figure is overinflating just by virtue of its inclusion of such things as supervisory bonuses, perks, and higher than average salary levels without which the true story of the real median workers salary would be even more appalling than it is currently shown to be these days.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-22 05:55:41

We need much more real capitalism and much less government. Saying the CBO is the most reliable voice (based on what ?) in a government of lying agencies isn't exactly a ringing endorsement. We don't need WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA, all this crap, we just need to bilaterally remove tariff (tax) barriers. It's precisely the rich who create the jobs through their investment and it is not a subsidy to let them keep more of their own money. You get a skewered perspective from ridding an excrement filled rattle trap cab around Chicago all day. By the way you are being investigated for passing up black passngers, you leftist phony ! If lazy bums like you would buy new cars those auto workers might still be working. By your anti-capitalist behavior you are sabotaging the whole economy and bringing on a real holocaust here ! Those figures on the "real median wage" are as phony as three dollar bills. 90% of us are far better off than in 1970 or 1990. If your not, it's your fault. You failed at serving your master, King Consumer, you piece of crap failure and like everyone else I am ashamed of you.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-21 16:27:45

The CBO is the most reliable of all the government sources. Besides I have reviewed all kinds of relevant sources for a few years now and the same proportionalities keep cropping up. US labor productivity has increased by at least 27% since 2000 and by nearly 90 since the early 1970s when the economy began to slow down and go into a recession. Since 2000, the real median wage has been reduced by about 6% and since the early 1970s by at least 20 to 20%. It takes more hours of labor today to purchase a standard consumer basket of goods than it did 35 years ago. This only requires simple reflection and common sense.
News has come out that over 200,000 more Auto Workers are to be laid off soon. The direct impact on the US economy will be catastrophic. This will mean that between 900,000 and one million UAW members will have been laid off from the US auto industry since 1978 when auto layoffs began in earnest. Those who stay on at Delphi, Ford, and GM will have their pay reduced in the next contract by 40% from 27.50/hour to 16.50/hour while the Auto majors pocket billions in profit and the CEOs vote themselves handsome raises and bonuses. It is no wonder that the distribution of wealth and income is so skewed and the economy is so slow. Tax cuts haven't spurred the economy. Lack of effective demand, low job growth, and unemployment is the core problem. Productive investment in plant and equipment has averaged a quarter of one percent annually over the past five years since the Bush Tax cuts have been in effect. The capital gains tax, which disproportionately favors the upper 1%, was slashed to 15% which means that the super rich, who glean most of their income from investments will have a lower effective rate of taxation than many of the working poor whose effective rate is between 15% and 25%. This is a disgrace. The rate of economic growth has slowed down since the savings rate of the rich is 25% while that of the poor is negative. The financial markets that the rich invest in don't generate many jobs but the spending of the working poor does generate millions of jobs. The equity and soundness of the Bush policies are poor.
GDP growth is high. This doesn't most people benefit. The Dow Jones and the NASDEQ have been going up but mostly in response to the wealth of US companies whose profits are increasingly earned through foreign based production. This harms US workers. Our productivity is only making the rich more wealthy. And the deficit is most from tax cuts and military spending on this obscene war. Social Security doesn't count as social spending because tax payers pay for it with a special premium that goes to a special fund that is often robbed to pay other government expenses. Global capitalism is skewing the distribution of wealth and power and is at the root of our current malaise.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-21 14:41:58

Wolf, I'd like to add to your comment about our strange economy.
For instance, we are told that education is the answer. Yet college costs have been increasing to the point that even middle class is having trouble paying the bill, usually having to be saddle with massive loans to pay off after graduation.
And education is not the be-all. What if all of us were to be given free college educations and we graduated, say 90% of our population, then obviously there are not nearly that many jobs that would need all that education. I know plenty of college educated people that are underemployed even today. I read a couple of years ago in the newspaper (wish I could cite it) that BA graduates earn an average of $23,000 a year. That doesn't show that a BA is worth much. And averages can be deceptive, what of the few who do end up running some great start-up and pull in millions, the skew of the average might mean that many BA's are under $20,000. And what of an education that we were told would be good for us, computers come to mind which even those are being outsourced.
But beyond that plenty of people are simple not adept at a career that a college education might point them to, or to be able to handle college. We need a portion of the economy that allows these people to make a decent living without having to load up on two jobs just to make the bills. We are creating a bad cycle for families. Two income parents with one or both working two jobs trying to bring up their kids with essentially not even being a part of their kids lives.
Economics isn't always about the money. Things like raising kids in a family that has time for them and can provide them with a decent education, a safe environment, etc. for most, hopefully all Americans should be more of a priority than how many millions some CEO pulls. Sure it sounds socialist, but so does "We the People." Beyond that, if we continue down a road where we have such stress in families or economic reasons not to even have families then we are possibly on a road to eventual crisis, downturn as a power or even revolution.
The stats have shown quite clearly that the rich are getting richer at the expense of the middle and lower class. We've been here before, the gilded age and We the People back then got quite upset with that and fought back in many manners, politically and with workers strikes that resulted in plenty of violence.
But we have become a society of fear. Mostly a fear of standing up to elites because we are so worried of losing our jobs. We keep giving an inch (no raise this year) another inch (401K rather than full retirement) another inch, (shared payment for health care, if health care even paid for), another inch (drug testing), another inch (cameras in the workforce), another inch (outsourced jobs) inch after inch. I wonder how many inches on how many people results in some sort of dissipation of that fear.Posted by Jon B on 2007-03-21 14:24:22

Wolf,
Agreed Posted by whattheheck on 2007-03-21 11:37:58

wth - thanks again. If nothing else, the experiences you site make me believe even more that living on a fraction of ones income is extremely important (say 80%). It is only by saving over a long period of time that we can overcome our "indentured servitude" status and become financially stable, even when the world around us is not.
One thing that puzzles me greatly is why a company would lay off a worker that is making it money? It seems to be against the companies self interest. . .Posted by wolf on 2007-03-21 09:16:18

Cabby,
Posted by whattheheck on 2007-03-21 07:04:41

Wolf,
I have related a bit of my own experience and that of my youngest son Posted by whattheheck on 2007-03-21 07:02:40

Philosophy and truth is not determined by numbers and the CBO has been partisan for years. Integrity and rationality as well as economic laws are not subject to majority whim or vote. By truth and justice you mean using the state to rob your betters. Your crazed idea of a very tiny elite and a great mass of impoverished proletarians doesn't conform to reality. Because of the huge expense of government most people can't survive on one income as they did before.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-20 16:49:02

BM,
My stats are not bogus. They are from the Congressional Budget Office. By all accounts the productivity index has lept way ahead of the growth of the national median household income which is itself quite inflated by the fact that it represents double incomes of married couples filed as joint returns. This is the case more often in the lower half of society than in the upper one percent. Caro is right to reject philosophies that cater to small elite numbers of people. They are not representitive and thus do not shed light on the truth in examining their highly unique situations. Those who prefer to examine them to the exclusion of most of the rest of us have agendas that are hostile to most of us and care little for either truth or justice.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-20 13:52:23

Thanks, Carolyn, for your feedback. I'm not really interested in percentages of the population when it comes to truth, morality, objectivity, values or anything else. I think your figure is off because I
think her message applies to everyone. Eddie Willers was the best of the so-called average man (hate that term) and she treated him fairly. If people choose to be ordinary or average there's not much to be done there. She was trying to lift a higher standard to repair too. She recognized youth and old age but there was no particular reason to emphasize them in the context of her message.
WTH, forget "we" the insignia of collectivists and concentrate on "I." If you have to have an altruistic justification for things, think of yourself has one improved unit. And that would be the truth, your a very smart, perceptive fellow. On those golden parachute ripoffs the shareholders have to get off their lazy butts and start monitoring these clowns' performance. The Home Depot CEO had a similar ripoff after a failed performance. Let's just keep the left bitch egalitarian language of envy and hate out of it.
Wolf, your the only one that's not making it.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-20 12:53:54

Mike, I too was seduced by Ayn Rand when I was young. After I was knocked around a bit by life, however, I began to realize that there were no old people, no children, and not even any regular ordinary people in her books. Everyone was a superhero or a leech on society.
Most of us are somewhere in between those two. I gave up on a philosophy that only deals with .00001% of the population.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.comPosted by Caro on 2007-03-20 11:35:05

wth - thanks for the link and your thoughtful comments. We live in a strange economy - probably the best the world has ever seen, yet it does have very significant deficiencies. I suppose the hope for those in the bottom 10-20% is to advance, which i imagine most do. Those who cannot, either due to lack of intelligence, ambition or whatever are being left behind.
Still i have to wonder if a significant number of hard working Americans are also being left behind due to no fault of their own. This seems unlikely to me, but i would be interested in your opinion on this.Posted by wolf on 2007-03-20 11:28:04

Which side are we on?
To paraphrase William Jefferson Clinton, Posted by whattheheck on 2007-03-20 11:27:29

I actually agree with most of what you posted above, WTH ! Don't die of shock, please. These types are what Rand called "pull peddlers" in Atlas Shrugged.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-20 11:18:52

Caro, Mike,
Posted by whattheheck on 2007-03-20 11:00:14

How is it rigged ? It can't be under the market as such. If there IS rigging it is due to government intervention that favor some interests at the expense of the rest. Now this is probably true but not across the board. I have read arguments on both sides of the immigration issue. A solution would be to make sure no one who comes here is ever entitled to government assistance and require them to have employment or own property here. Hans Herman-Hoppe was written on this frequently on the lew rockwell.com website. I should warn you that if you are in favor of enforcing the law at the border you will labelled "racist" by the many left-lib nuts on this board. Good luck !Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-20 09:58:17

Yes, the market determines wages and salaries, Mike, but it's a rigged market.
Big business pays Congress to depress wages by bringing in skilled labor through special visas, allowing offshoring without any penalty, and allowing millions of unskilled laborers to cross the border.
Are you really as naive as you seem to be?
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.comPosted by Caro on 2007-03-20 09:28:12

Your stats are bogus, Chicago, but the point here is that the market determines wages and salaries, not Congress.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-20 09:16:16

BM doesn't know that labor has no power. The Republican congress isn't going to listen to a bunch of unskilled low wage workers complain about their lost overtime when big business is lining their pockets with campaign contributions. Even most of organized labor, what's left of it, is earning pre-tax income below the national median. The real income of the working poor may have increased a bit over time but real value of the median wage today is worth less than it was thirty years ago. Most families in the bottom 80% of society absolutely need two incomes to support a family of four or more. This wasn't the case years ago. Real median income has declined by over 6% since 2000 while real GDP growth has increased nearly 15% in the same period. Corporate profits as a portion of the national income have also greatly risen in this same period.Inequality is the issue. This is what needs to be addressed.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-20 09:06:59

People aren't raising hell because they need their jobs. They need their insurance. They don't want to lose vesting in their retirement plans.
Laws have been relaxed, and so have regulations. Enforcement agencies have been starved. Companies have been advised by the agencies that are supposed to protect workers how to sidestep the laws the do exist.
Republicans call it compassionate conservatism.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.comPosted by Caro on 2007-03-19 17:26:58

What situations ? If it's illegal why aren't people raising hell ? I've heard about the change from nonexempt to exempt but I also heard it was being challenged in courts.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-19 17:01:21

The Republican Congress and the Bush administration paved the way to allow businesses to make many positions that hadn't previously been considered management positions exempt from the wage and hour laws. Millions of people were affected, and no longer receive overtime pay.
And that doesn't include the situations where management illegally forces people to work overtime without pay.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.comPosted by Caro on 2007-03-19 13:29:40

Shitcago, I'm a libertarian, not a National Socialist like you or a fascist, fascism being the New Deal Corporate State brand of socialism. Nor have I apologized for revisionism, am a forthright historical revisionist. I'm not a fan of the Germans but I totally disagree with this hippy dippy 60s nonsense that the teacher learns as much from the students, if that was the case that person should not be teaching. By definition the teacher has to know more, hopefully much more, than the student. The
old German pedagogical method was good because the students had to learn, the classroom was not a political bullsession. And the stupidass ignorance of the untutored young was not respected or tolerated. And yes, youth IS wasted on the young.
WTH, give my love to Lizzie. The first Clarabelle, a beautiful tort, I got when I was 18 and was 36 when she died, half my life and all of my adult life. The current Clarabelle will be 13 on May 1. As will Jacob and Michelle, I'm guessing in their cases. I totally agree with you on the all the coercive, eminent domain and other sleazy tactics that Wal-Mart's uses and some others. Totally opposed to the subsidies for them. Don't mind tax breaks AS LONG as the tax expenditures don't exceed them. In places like Berkeley because of the left it takes an act of god to get anyhting built or any new business approved. Advertising is productive but how much so depends on the concretes of any given situation, the left has been spewing this garbage that advertisers are forcing people to buy at some subliminal level. We do have free will. Your right about the low auto quality in the 70s, my 73 Vega lasted 78. Since the 90s auto quality in US cars has dramatically improved though
very expensive. Most of your other points I agree with.
Carolyn, only management employees don't get OT as I well know !Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-19 13:14:39

I don't understand why teachers should become the very "model of Germanic domination" and I'm not sure the meaning of the recommendation. BM is a known fascist sympathizer and apologist. Perhaps this puts his statement into some perspective. His contempt for youth, which is something perhaps we all feel at some time, is especially rank. He is a vicious individual. He is also dogmatic and ignorant. I guess we must suffer his presence here on this and other threads.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-19 10:56:01

Mike,
You never heard anything from me about productivity being more important than customer demand. My only point on productivity is that it is the only reasonable measure for increasing pay for a given job.
There is no single reason why products and services sell and the reasons fluctuate.
Supply and demand are basic, but as you point out producing unwanted items are going to leave you with a large rotting inventory. To sell you must do it at a price the customer is willing to pay for an item he needs or wants, of a quality which is as good or better than your competition.
What I see happening in the U.S. today is merely an extrapolation of what happened to my business, to many of my clients and to my area of the country.
With a confluence of circumstancesPosted by whattheheck on 2007-03-19 06:35:12

Anastasia,
The flip side of the coin for your internet theory is that many businesses complain mightily about endless email, the drudgery of finding the important emails amongst the spam and useless stuff. People spend a lot of down time sending around the latest email jokes and crap "important read this" stuff. My wife talks about how much emailing goes on around the office that has absolutely nothing to do with work, as well as surfing the web just for fun. Her boss spends plenty of time on a dating website. And every year about this time I read in the newspaper about how people at work watch the March Madness basketball games on-line and keep up on their brackets while at work.
It's probably a productivity wash. The Internet can speed things up and also provide reasons to waste time.Posted by Jon B on 2007-03-19 04:06:06

How about the demoralization that comes from job and wage uncertainty? How about exhaustion from working overtime without pay and working several jobs to eke out a living? How about the frustration of working for people who always want more from you but donPosted by Caro on 2007-03-18 16:53:56

I can tell those economists what happened in 1995. That was the year everyone I know started to go online. Email and the internet grew dramatically in use between 1995 and about 2000/2001 when absolutely everyone was online. In 1995, very few people communicated via email, you didn't submit your articles via email (usually) and you didn't do most of your research online unless you were with a paper that paid for Nexis/Lexis. There was no Google yet, but the first search engines were starting to appear. I can see the difference it has made in my own work, which I can now complete in half if not a third the time.
Now can I have those clueless economists' paychecks? As someone pointed out, failing to mention the uncoupling of productivity and wage growth has got to be a factor in there somewhere. People who haven't had raises in five years become less productive. I've seen it happen around me.Posted by Anastasia P on 2007-03-18 12:39:28

WTH, you sound like a Taylorist. No one can or should be busy all the time nor productivity the end/all & be/all, it's what the consumers want in the marketplace that is GOD. You can be productive as ll hell but if the product (derivative of "productive") doesn't sell, the "productivity" is wasted time, effort and money. I've had to discipline employees for excessive personal calls, etc., but I realize that no one plug away at the daily grind nonstop. "Political will" has nothing to do with economics, ignore Marxists like Chicago cabbie and since you live in Illinois, stay out of his cab. It's a menace to the public. Increased productivity only helps if you are producing something enough people want to buy and that has nothing in common with that sick old Judaeo-Christian Protestant Ethic bullshit. I'm reasonably productive but I do other things at work too.
Peachfuzz, we spend too much time focussing on children, I'd rather be with cats. Every goddamn bottle has some childproof cap it takes Charles Atlas to screw off. Children need to be seen and not heard. Not more stolen taxpayer $ but good ass beatings are better here. Have them learn the classics and limit the socializing with their equally ignorant peers. The teacher should be the model of Germanic domination, get rid of progressive ed and phys ed.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-18 12:31:08

cabby,
That day will come when workers can afford to buy more congressmen than CEOs can.
Instead of political willl we have an over abundance of "political won't".
Notice how few soloists we have on any issue Posted by whattheheck on 2007-03-18 05:50:58

It may well be the case that heightened productivity growth may make more income available to workers. But that hasn't been the case. Most recent studies of US productivity growth over the past twenty years or so show that although there is an overall trend towards higher productivity, and GDP growth in general, workers' incomes are lagging seriously behind such growth. Increased productivity only helps workers' incomes when there exists suffient political will to make it happen.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2007-03-17 13:43:25

Productivity as another economic stat that is sort of just a guess.
We never count the world that is off the legal grid of business. Under the table work, the drug trade, etc.
At a legitimate business, increased productivity can really be nothing but a scam. A worker is told to concentrate on things that reflect productivity and ignore the tasks that don't count. A retail worker may be told to deal with customers all the time and not clean the display or the number of meetings is decreased or shortened. In other words, non-productive work is given the shaft that results in pumping the productivity stat. I know it happens where I work. I look back five years and tasks we used to do that didn't count in productivity we do far less, we are getting sloppy truth be told.
The other side of the coin is whether the productivity is the same quality when increased. And I have a sneaky suspicion that we are getting less quality on many goods and services. The goods, well, we don't even make so many of them any more, and plenty of them are of less quality. The service, I'm not as satisfied by service as I used to be. But the quality factor is ignored in productivity stats.
That's my two cents worth as others here have named other thoughts I already had.Posted by Jon B on 2007-03-17 09:24:11

IMO Productivity has always been the only legitimate way to Posted by whattheheck on 2007-03-17 06:43:18

"New jobs are created that often are better than the old ones that go away. No more people making buggy whips, but lots building computers."
What is Wolf's idea of 'better' jobs? The shift over the last 20 years in the US has been from highly-paid unionized manufacturing jobs with vacation time, health insurance, and retirement benefits to low-wage service jobs with few or no benefits. Those retail clerks (aka 'sales associates'), Starbucks barristas, hotel and restaurant workers cannot be outsourced, so they're the jobs that people move into when their factory jobs go to India, China, and Latin America.
Service positions are notoriously impervious to unionization (God bless SIEU for their heroic efforts!) so most service workers have little say in their working conditions and little recourse when unjustly treated. These folks are now the backbone of the US economy, and enable our 'too busy to cook' lifestyle, but they aren't considered worthy of a living wage, so many have two or more jobs to make rent.
As a worker in the retail sector, I'd agree with Wolf that jobs are better now than 100 years ago, but they're sure a lot worse than they were 50 years ago, or even 25 years ago. We're headed in the wrong direction.
Until we measure our economic health on the basis of how the majority of people (and especially CHILDREN) live, rather than how much money a few people are making, we are clueless about the actual situation. Which was my objection to the original article.Posted by peachmcd on 2007-03-17 04:32:11

Productivity is directly proportional to Hope.Posted by CornChip on 2007-03-17 00:02:35

WTH, you are more right here than the Lone Wolf. That boy is Scorp's illegitimate son and looks at the world through Limbaughian rose tinted glasses. Always double the official unemployment rate. As soon as the Lone Wolf gets sacked he will start to agree with you. His kind have to learn everything the hard way. There are certain people you can't teach anything to. They are trainable but uneducable. From touching the hot stove to going to the ER to extract his pecker from a coke bottle the Lone Wolf has to learn everything though trial and error, mostly the latter in his case. But you are a Saint, WTH, for trying to enlighten him. Unfortunately you'd have more luck with a mule.Posted by blondemike on 2007-03-16 17:23:49

Wolf,
Here is an article on the current job market Posted by whattheheck on 2007-03-16 13:58:57

Wolf,
I seem to recall the two of us having this exchange before. My recent experience (bad) versus your experience (good). We are better off in many ways than 100 years ago, but I maintain we are not as well off in general as thirty or forty years agoPosted by whattheheck on 2007-03-16 13:47:05

"Another effect of increased productivity is increase unemployment. If 8 workers can suddenly produce what it used to take 10 workers to make, 2 workers will soon be unemployed."
The US has a very low rate of unemployment. New jobs are created that often are better than the old ones that go away. No more people making buggy whips, but lots building computers.
That said, the least intelligent of us are having a harder and harder time getting ahead. Being strong, which was very valuable 50-100 years ago is now almost worthless. But this might lead to an adapting population, as people choose mates that are successful and reproduce, passing on desired characteristics.Posted by wolf on 2007-03-16 12:06:24

"Over or not, productivity certainly has been OVERRATED!"
I don't think so. The time it takes to obtain the necessities of life (shelter, food, clothes, etc) is at a very low point. Folks living in primitive cultures (e.g., the Kombi in West Papua, a stone age level people) spend most of their time working hard to eke out meager existences. Even the "poor" in the US and other developed countries live a materially rich existence compared to how most people lived 100 years ago. I think this is due to extreme increases in productivity - how we raise food, wash clothes, get around, etc etc etc. We are very fortunate to live in times of plenty.
Perhaps the real problem is that expectations grow faster than productivity? No matter how much we have we always want more and better. This is the treadmill that leads to discontent.
Of course, all things change and times like this never last forever. Best to enjoy it while it lasts (and prudent to tread lightly, both as cultures and individuals).Posted by wolf on 2007-03-16 12:01:10

Another effect of increased productivity is increase unemployment. If 8 workers can suddenly produce what it used to take 10 workers to make, 2 workers will soon be unemployed.
I don't have a link handy, but there have been numerous stories that increased productivity due to techonological advances has caused more lost jobs in the US than globalization and outsourcing. This is a two-edged sword, because the productivity of US workers (largely due to an excellent infrastructure, automation, and other tech advances) is one of the things that keeps higher paid US workers competitive with lower paid workers in developing states.Posted by oliver cromwell on 2007-03-16 09:09:38

Over or not, productivity certainly has been OVERRATED!
LetPosted by whattheheck on 2007-03-16 08:05:30

Productivity gains and wage gains have not been tied together for at least the last 10 years. The gains in 'productivity' have been the source of the widening profit margins of corporations during that period. It doesn't surprise me that, with many states now passing legislation mandating increases in the minimum wage, 'productivity' (i.e., profit gouging at the expense of workers) has taken a minor hit. What surprises me is that In These Times would post an analysis that didn't recognize this state of affairs for what it is.
Can we please look at 'indicators' that have some bearing on the wages and quality of life enjoyed by working people, rather than assuming that what's good for Exxon (Wal-Mart, Pfizer, Microsoft...) is good for America?Posted by peachmcd on 2007-03-16 07:00:38

I wish there were more articles on ITT regarding the economy. What has been presented in this one merely skirts the edge of the complex house of cards our economic system has become. Productivity is a significant indicator. But to simply allude to hedge funds and other machinations on Wall Street without examining derivatives and the game being played regarding the dollarPosted by recursive prophet on 2007-03-15 11:25:38